


Clean

by probee



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M, Fluff, One Shot, Thinking about stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:22:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26183377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/probee/pseuds/probee
Summary: A rainy day makes way from some quiet contemplation.
Relationships: Ziva David/Anthony DiNozzo
Comments: 5
Kudos: 23





	Clean

The air is heavy, weighed down by the humidity of the passing storm. The rain falls gently in the small yard, creating a sheen over the sidewalk this evening that threatens to become a reflecting pond if it doesn’t let it up soon.

She is curled up in the weathered Adirondack chair on the small deck, her body still, and her gaze set afar, like a lioness surveying her domain. She cradles a mug of tea in both hands, the steam rising to join the mist that surrounds her. 

“I was wondering where you’d gone to.”

She is awoken from her reverie by the humor in Tony’s voice behind her, and she turns around to acknowledge his presence. At some point after dinner, he’d scurried off to catch up on some neglected work, and it wasn’t until an hour later that he’d noticed that Ziva had disappeared from her usual reading perch in her favorite armchair in the living room. 

“It’s raining cats and dogs out here.”

“Ah, that would make our daughter extremely happy, would it not?”

“Can’t argue with that. Guess we’ll have to settle for the tadpoles for now.”

She offers him the hint of a smile in return, but her her attention is fixed upon the horizon. (The horizon, here, is the hedge separating their yard from the neighbor’s. Not quite the Saharan vista of his imagination.)

Curious, he grabs a chair and joins her under the awning, without saying a word. He follows her lead, basking in the hypnotic melody of drops hitting the roof, the drizzle pulling a curtain around them. Here they are, protected in their cocoon, the rest of the world melting away from them. Truth be told, he’s a little on edge, unused to this lack of conversation in their new home, but he also senses the importance of this moment of solitude. He’s become an expert at biding his time over the years, so he lies in wait for her to make the first move.

(Or not. If she wants to sit here for the rest of their days, immovable like a sphinx surveying the desert, he’ll plant roots right along with her.)

She pulls her legging-clad knees in even closer, taking in a deep breath and sighing, letting go of a lifetime of worries in a single exhalation. He’d give a penny for her thoughts, but he’ll make do with whatever she’s willing to part with tonight. Unsurprisingly, she seems to read his mind.

“I used to love watching the rain when I was a kid.”

She pauses for a second, like she were waiting for a prompt, as would have so often been the case in the old days, but none comes forward. He’s still wary of pushing too hard, too soon, so he’s learned to let her take the lead when it comes to deciphering the code to Ziva David’s meditations. 

“It hardly ever rained at home. Not like this, anyway. In the winter, we would have these thunderstorms that seemed to come out of nowhere, and end just as quickly. My sister used to complain about them, because they got in the way of her imaginary stage design outside,” she recalls with a chuckle, “but my mother used to tell her that we needed the water for things to grow. The stormy skies would give way to the shining sun.”

He waits to see if any storm clouds brew behind her eyes. 

“How’d she handle that?”

“Usually by tearing up the house and inevitably ending up in what we would now call a ‘time out.’”

It’s his turn to laugh, trying to picture the siblings squabbling a lifetime ago, before they had to confront the demons in their home head-on. (The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, it seems.)

“But not you?”

She shakes her head. “The storms always fascinated me. How you could feel the air change, all of a sudden, and then the sky would just open up. And there was nothing you could do to stop it. Life was always so busy, so regimented, so volatile, but one thing that no one could control was Mother Nature. You could predict and plan all you wanted, but when the storms came, all you could do was take cover and wait it out.”

He has a feeling she isn’t just talking about the weather.

“I would sit by our living room window if we were at home in Tel Aviv, or on our porch if we were in Haifa with my grandparents, and watch it pour down. It drowned out all the other noise, for a little while at least.” The wistfulness in her voice belies the darker memories bubbling beneath the surface.

He watches her in turn, understanding how rare these moments of utter tranquility must have been in her young life. Hell, still were, until recently. Some days, it seems like she’s still struggling to grasp them, even now.

“It’s funny. There is so much fear tied to storms. About their unpredictability, and the floods and destruction left in their wake. They are the only thing that cannot be bent to one’s will. But I never felt that fear. To me, they were… soothing. Like the rain would fall and wipe the slate clean. No matter what was happening, you could start over fresh when it was over. It was like finally being able to breathe.”

Once upon a time, this kind of talk would make him nervous, wonder if she weren’t about to decide her own slate needed to be wiped, all by herself. Yet here they are, together, and he realizes that maybe, that isn’t what this is about at all. That maybe after every storm is a chance for a sunny start, too.

“Sounds like maybe your mom was right.”

“I guess so.”

They sit in silence for a spell, mesmerized by the clatter of the downpour and the motionlessness of the moment. Where once they would have both felt awkward at the silence between them, now they sit in reverence of it, the beauty of what doesn’t need to be said anymore

After a while, though, he comes to realize that this is her quiet confessional, between herself and whatever power is driving her forward, and he feels as though she needs this time alone to commune with her higher power. He gets up, a little less limber than he’d care to admit, and places a gentle kiss on the top of her head, before heading back into the house. Once inside, he watches from the kitchen window as bit by bit the tension seeps from her body, washed away by the deluge and the promise of tomorrow. 

Time stands still, and for what feels like hours, all she hears is the patter of the rain, gently surrounding her, the rushing sound eclipsing all of her worries as she welcomes its release. She takes a sip of her tea, and smiles to herself as her old friend envelops her in its comforting embrace. 

She thinks that, maybe this time, she is finally clean.

**Author's Note:**

> My apologies to Taylor Swift for paraphrasing her song, "Clean," on the final line.
> 
> I've been in a major writing rut, and have a long fic that I only add to sporadically, so I figured a rainy day like today was the perfect time to bang out a short one-shot to get out of a creative rut. This was also inspired by the scene in "Hiatus," where, amidst the chaos of Gibbs being blown up, Ziva stands transfixed by the storm outside the ship.


End file.
